Helping your child to eat healthily supports their healthy growth and development into adulthood. A healthy diet can have a positive effect on your child’s health, helping them to maintain a healthy weight, stabilise their moods, sharpen their minds, and avoid a variety of health problems. A healthy diet can also have a positive effect on your child’s sense of mental and emotional wellbeing.
But we know it can be difficult to get children to make healthy food choices. Mealtimes can easily feel like a battle.
A range of factors can affect your child’s attitudes to eating, including how you and other members of the family eat, their friends’ eating habits, body image pressure, trauma, stress, and bullying. Appetites may change at different ages, and this is normal; some children eat a lot or eat anything, while others are more particular. Some children are “fussy eaters”, and it’s made more challenging when they decide they don’t want to eat certain foods that you know they used to enjoy.
You might find it tricky to get your child to sit down and have a few bites of healthy food. Some children may refuse to eat, as a way of demonstrating their independence, or because they’re feeling anxious and trying to control the situation. This is when it can become a power struggle, or a battle of wills, meaning mealtimes can unfortunately be one of the most stressful parts of the day. But these suggestions may help make mealtimes more enjoyable:
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